Sisters of the Fire Read online

  None of them were Hakon. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  ‘Sighere,’ she called, ‘you finish up out here. I’m looking for the Crow King.’

  As she stalked away from the battle, Thrymm at her heels, another man tried to attack her but she bashed him off with her free hand then stuck him into the ground with the Widowsmith. Some of them, she knew, died at her hand on purpose: it had once been considered an honourable death among raiders to die at the point of her father’s blade, but now it was Bluebell they spoke of in those terms.

  She didn’t care either way, as long as they died.

  Bluebell put a foot on his chest and retrieved her sword, then carefully pushed open the door to the hall. Quiet. The soft drip-drip of blood from the tip of her sword onto the wooden boards.

  North Hall had been built to keep the warm in, so a series of doors led off the hall, presumably to bowers. A fire was burning in the hearth, something savoury bubbling in an iron pot over it. Clothes and freshly oiled byrnies and knives and spoons and combs lay on the long benches that lined the walls. The raiders had moved in, almost as though they intended to stay. But why? What purpose had it served to kill a whole family?

  No Hakon.

  Thrymm growled low in her throat.

  ‘Which door?’ she said to the dog.

  Thrymm padded forwards, sniffing under each door, stopping at the fourth one and sitting to wait for Bluebell.

  Bluebell strode across, kicked the door in. Again, no Hakon. Hiding behind a bed was a man, smaller and younger than the others, maybe the son of one of the seasoned warriors who probably lay dead outside. Too much of a coward to try his arm in real battle.

  Bluebell loved cowards. Cowards always talked.

  ‘Where’s Hakon?’ she asked, the tip of her sword at his throat.

  ‘Not here Hakon!’ he cried.

  ‘Then where?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Where are you from? Why are you here?’

  He pressed his lips together, but the glaze to his eyes told her he loved life more than he loved staying silent. There were men at Merkhinton who knew how to make cowards talk. Bluebell knew she didn’t have the patience or the cunning for it; she withdrew her sword.

  ‘Thrymm, if he moves, kill him.’

  Thrymm barked and snapped at the man’s face, and he cowered, pressing himself against the wall as though he wanted to become part of it. Thrymm stood guard, her eyes never leaving his face.

  Bluebell quickly checked in the other rooms but found them empty. Each room made her unhappier. Blackstan’s family possessions – soft embroidered blankets and finely carved chests – were strewn about, overturned and defiled by the rough fingers of the interlopers.

  Satisfied that the rooms were all empty, she rejoined her hearthband outside. All the raiders were dead, and Ricbert had sustained a shocking injury to his left arm – a chunk of him was missing. He sat on the ground, panic rising in his face as Sighere tried to calm him and wrap the wound.

  Bluebell knelt before Ricbert, taking his chin in her hands and holding it until he made sustained eye contact with her. ‘You fought well,’ she said. ‘You honoured your ancestors and the Horse God. We ride now for Merkhinton. Would you ride with me or with Sighere?’

  He swallowed over a dry throat. ‘With you, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘This wound will not kill you,’ she said. Her own body was starting to ache now, reminding her of the impossible feats she had performed. ‘If you lose the use of the arm, my father will compensate you richly: gold and amber and silver and precious red gems from the long-away south. A long and happy life awaits you, Ricbert.’ She stood, turning to Sighere. ‘There’s a young fellow cowering in one of the bowers; Thrymm’s with him. Tie him up and we’ll throw him over one of the packhorses. We ride straight away for Merkhinton. I need to see with my own eyes that the stronghold still stands.’

  ‘Hakon, my lord?’ Sighere said.

  ‘Not here.’ She glanced over her shoulder back at the house. ‘Not fucking here.’

  The long summer evening gave them time to reach Merkhinton before nightfall. Nobody questioned Bluebell’s decision to push on. They could see with their own eyes Ricbert slumping lower and lower in the saddle in front of her. Ricbert was the son of one of the powerful southern earls, she didn’t want to lose him.

  The first glimpse of Merkhinton – whole and unburned, nestled into the foothills of the mountains – showed that her worst fears were unfounded. No raiders had been here, Hakon was not in league with King Gisli of the Ice-Heart, and help for Ricbert was at hand. Their banner was spotted from the guard tower, and the huge iron gates were already grinding open before they approached the earthworks that made up the flanking ditch and ramparts of the stronghold. A squad was sent out to lower a bridge over the ditch. The strike of hoof on ground changed from grass to wood to stone, and then her hearthband was swarmed by stewards and stablehands. She barked orders to get Ricbert to a physician and handed down his limp body to five pairs of hands that laid him on the stones. Bluebell removed her helm, handed it to a steward and shook out her fair hair, striding towards the back of the retinue where the coward raider was bound across a pack horse. She undid the leather straps that had kept him in place and slung him over her shoulders.

  ‘Where is Wybert?’ she asked of one of the guardsmen.

  ‘In the keep, my lord,’ he answered, too in awe of her to meet her eyes.

  She took a moment in the twilit courtyard to orient herself. The gates clanged shut behind her. Wooden living quarters and store rooms, an alehouse, a rough hall. There was the keep, a stone funnel built into the side of the mountain. Above it, a cliff rose steeply, a rocky overhang cast a pointed shadow. The young raider around her shoulders wriggled pointlessly against her. Somebody had bound his mouth, but she could hear he was shouting against the thick gag.

  ‘Shut up,’ she muttered. Her body ached. Battle, riding with Ricbert, carrying an angry raider. ‘Just shut the fuck up.’

  Bluebell made her way across the courtyard to the keep, and kicked twice firmly at the door. The sound of footsteps, bars being slid out of place, and then a woman in brown robes opened the door.

  ‘I’m looking for Wybert,’ Bluebell said.

  ‘This way.’

  Bluebell didn’t like stone buildings, they were always cold, dark and hollow, making sounds echo and refusing to absorb warmth from the hearth. She followed the woman down a hallway to a bare room with only a thin rug on the ground and two wooden chairs.

  ‘Wait here,’ the woman said, and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

  Bluebell dumped the man on the rug and put a foot on him to keep him in place. She noticed the chairs had iron clamps on the legs and arms, and decided not to sit down.

  Wybert was at the door a few moments later.

  ‘My lord, what a pleasure to see you,’ he said. He was a portly man under his grey robes, which Bluebell always thought shameful for one so young. He had been an average soldier, but truly excelled at languages and diplomacy. Bluebell didn’t like him. He had wet lips like a frog and his eyes gleamed too brightly at the thought of extracting information from someone.

  ‘This is one of Hakon’s men. I want to know what they were doing at North Hall, where they came from and how, but most of all, I want to know where Hakon is so I can kill him. Got it?’

  ‘Of course, my lord.’ Wybert knelt next to the man and gently pushed Bluebell’s foot off him. ‘Come on now, friend. I should like to get to know you a little better.’ Then he spoke to the man in the sing-song gutter voice of the raiders.

  Bluebell stepped back. ‘I will meet with you in the morning. For now, I need strong drink and a mountain of food.’

  ‘Enjoy your revels, my lord.’ He turned once again to the man on the floor, gave a small smile. ‘I shall enjoy mine.’

  The alehouse was full and hot, music and laughter and fine mead flowing. Bluebell left behind thoughts of the day an
d of Hakon. She grew weary of company, and wandered away from the alehouse around midnight to find a place to sleep for the night. She remembered a wooden building – it looked like all the other wooden buildings – that functioned as a guest house for visiting commanders. The faintest glow of light had stayed in the sky, and probably would until morning. It robbed the stars of their brilliance, but Bluebell could still see a million of them. She stopped a moment, head spinning drunkenly, and gazed up at them.

  A voice came to her on the wind. ‘Southlander. Woman.’

  She turned and peered off into the dark.

  ‘Southlander.’ The voice was heavily accented. She took a few steps in the direction it came from. Could see a white face at the window of the keep, behind iron bars. It was the raider, the coward she had handed to Wybert this evening.

  ‘What do you want, dog?’ she asked him.

  ‘You die.’ His grip on her language was clearly limited.

  She spread her palms. ‘We all die.’

  ‘You die. Hakon kill you. Randrman kill you. Sword of your doom.’

  Randrman. She recognised the word. Some tribes of raiders kept among themselves an elder who functioned as both healer and magician.

  ‘Is that right? Well, you enjoy your time locked up in there, won’t you?’ she said, threw in a few Is-hjarta curse words she knew, then stumbled off in search of a warm bed.

  Sword of your doom.

  Bluebell didn’t like the idea of magic; she didn’t like anything she couldn’t see and smash. When she found Hakon, she’d find this randrman too, and make sure he died first.

  In the end, the coward told Wybert everything. Wybert won some of the information with threats, and some with promises that would be delivered only when Bluebell and the army she commandeered from Merkhinton had stomped out Hakon’s nest. Hakon’s settlement, out on an island, reached by a ship down the Gemærea then out into the grey sea. Not quite an army; more an angry warband of eighty or ninety men who longed to depose Gisli and take over the Ice-Heart first, then all of Thyrsland. Grandiose, overweening ambitions that relied on cunning, stealth, and wishful thinking more than grounded war strategy and strength. Still, Bluebell knew never to underestimate a raider. They were born gnashing their gums, eager for battle.

  Days on the river and then on the sea. Bluebell’s native environment was not water, but she refused to succumb to the seasickness that drove many of her men to the side to vomit themselves inside out. Every time her stomach lurched, she thought about slaying Hakon and crushing his ridiculous ambitions, and it made her stand strong and tall again.

  They landed on the far side of the island at dawn. Archers had been ready to take out the night watch, but there was no night watch. Bluebell wondered if Hakon thought the island so well fortified naturally from the west. As she and her army found their way around rocks and cliff faces in armour, she started to wonder if he was right.

  And still they met no resistance. A gravel path, obviously built by human hands, led straight up to the encampment and was entirely undefended. Was Hakon so delusional that he thought nobody would tell the secret of his island stronghold?

  At the top of the path, the sun cracked the horizon, bathing the scene in orange light. Bluebell’s heart thudded from the climb up hill. The morning breeze caught the ends of her hair. Through the slit in her helm she found herself looking at a collection of rough buildings in a hollow, the raven-gabled hall sitting in the middle of them.

  ‘My lord?’ Sighere was at her shoulder. She looked behind her and saw the army had stopped, tightly packed together along the gravel path.

  ‘Destroy the buildings and everyone in them!’ she shouted.

  Stampeding feet churned up the ground. Bluebell called for Sighere, and her own hearthband followed her directly to the hall. She kicked in the doors, then pulled up as she saw what was inside.

  Old men. Stewards. Shipbuilders. Fisherman. The weak, the lame. Not a soldier in sight. All of them, sleeping together on blankets on the floor. They began to wake, shocked and scared, scrambling back into each other.

  ‘Hold your swords!’ Bluebell called, as her hearthband readied themselves to start the slaughter. ‘There’s nobody here who can hurt us.’ She turned to Sighere. ‘Go back outside. See what’s happening.’

  ‘We are the only ones here!’ one of the old men called in a thick accent. ‘Hakon and his army are long gone.’

  Disappointment swirled down on her. She was ready for war, not for slaughtering old men. Their sagging eyes reminded her of her father.

  Bluebell turned and stalked out.

  Sighere jogged to meet her. ‘All the buildings are empty, my lord.’

  ‘This one isn’t!’ This was a stocky soldier, emerging from one of the huts dragging an old man by the collar of his shirt.

  Bluebell was about to shout at him to let the old man go, when she noticed his clothes covered in feathers and shells. Randrman.

  He was laughing and laughing as though being dragged from his hut by an army was the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. The soldier dragged him forwards and threw him at Bluebell’s feet in the dirt.

  ‘Mighty Bluebell,’ he laughed.

  ‘You speak our tongue?’

  ‘I speak all tongues.’

  ‘Where is Hakon?’

  ‘Flown the nest.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s no point asking any of us where he is. He didn’t say. He packed up his army and left, months ago.’

  ‘Months ago? Then why are you all hiding out in here?’

  ‘I sensed you coming. You’re loud.’

  Bluebell crouched next to him, pinning his shoulder to the ground with one hand and holding her blade across his throat with the other. How she hated magic, especially when it was used against her. ‘Did you sense I would do this, too?’

  He chuckled slowly. ‘It’s not Hakon you should fear; nor me. I’m but an old man with knees that no longer work. You should fear your sister. She is the one who has the sword.’ He grinned. Most of his teeth were missing.

  ‘What do you mean? Which sword? Which sister?’

  ‘Griðbani. A sword forged to kill you. The steel won’t rest until it has tasted your blood, Princess.’

  The word made a light flicker in her memory. Wylm, her stepbrother: wasn’t that what he’d called the sword he tried to kill her with four years ago? ‘It already tried and failed, randrman,’ she said. ‘It tasted my stepbrother’s blood instead.’

  He laughed again. ‘You oughtn’t have let it go, once you had your hand on it.’

  ‘Which sister has it?’ She found it impossible to think that any of her sisters would have a trollblade, let alone intend to use it on her. None of them were fighters.

  ‘I don’t feel like telling you.’

  The old trickster wouldn’t give her anything and she knew it. But if he was strong enough to have sensed her coming and he was in league with Hakon, then she didn’t want him in the world any more. She stood and plunged the Widowsmith into his throat. ‘Then I don’t feel like letting you breathe.’

  He gurgled blood as she stalked away from him, leaving her blade nailed into the ground for now. The army was reassembling around her. She could see Sighere had placed a guard around the hall where the unarmed men were. Her brain was clouded. She wasn’t sure what to do. She had been expecting Hakon, a battle, to capture this enchanted sword and melt it down with her own hands at the forge. She certainly didn’t expect to hear that one of her sisters held the means of killing her. But which sister?

  And where was Hakon?

  Willow had been ill for two days, and could not afford to miss another day of training. She dragged herself from her bed in the cold dawn, Avaarni trailing sleepily behind her, for morning prayers. Then she took the child back to Gudrun and made her way down the hill on dewy grass. She batted away angel voices, the hissing ones who told her she hadn’t been so ill as she thought, that she was simply lazy and didn’t burn hot enough to fight for Maava. Instead
of torturing herself with guilt, she would make it her aim to impress her rough-faced trainer.

  She’d offered him gold, but he’d said he’d had enough of gold. He’d asked for payment in two other ways. First, a roof over his head; Gudrun had been happy to find him an outbuilding at Bramble Hill a long way from the family bowerhouse. Second, he wanted to learn the language and laws of Thyrsland, so Willow had been teaching him good manners and trimartyr ways. He acquired language and religious knowledge as quickly as she acquired skill with a blade. She was almost proud of him. For a famous heathen.

  He stood, patiently leaning on his sword, waiting for her. When he saw her approach, he straightened, nodded his grim head, and said in his rough musical accent, ‘Good morning, Willow.’

  ‘Good morning, Hakon,’ she replied. ‘Shall we begin?’